John McCain’s Son Jimmy Just Read His Father's Favorite Poem at the Late Senator’s Funeral
John McCain's son Jimmy just read his father John McCain's favorite poem at his funeral in the National Cathedral. The poem, Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson, was one that McCain reportedly read at his own father's funeral.
John McCain loved this poem and read it at his father’s funeral. His son Jimmy will read it shortly at the National Cathedral. McCain’s father taught it to him; McCain taught it to his sons. pic.twitter.com/tSG8MtmCZ8
- Maeve Reston (@MaeveReston) September 1, 2018
The poem, written by the Scottish poet who died of Tuberculosis, goes as follows:
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
John McCain's father, John Sidney McCain Jr., was an admiral in the United States Navy who served from the 1940s until the 1970s. McCain's son Jimmy, 30, is a marine.
The youngest of the McCain boys, Jimmy, trained as a pilot and went on to serve as a marine in Iraq when he was 19. Senator McCain was adament about not using his family for political points, refusing to mention his son's active service even when questioned about the military situation in Iraq at the time.
Senator McCain had another favorite poem, which his daughter Meghan mentioned during her eulogy for her father today. That poem was Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” which McCain learnedvia the “tap code” American prisoners of war used to communicate while being held as prisoners of war in the "Hanoi Hilton" in Veitnam. His neighbor and fellow POW taught McCain several poems he had memorized in school.
That poem begins with this stanza:
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
You can read the full text here.
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